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cmcclain | January 13, 2008Via my weekly reading of the unopen access journal Science, there is an interesting story about beeswax, huge freakin' chunks of it, that occasionally wash ashore in Oregon's Nehalem Bay. At low-low tides, a wooden hull is revealed in the bay bolstering the mystery of the "beeswax wreck". A team is now investigating the wreck which they think may be a Spanish galleon that sank between 1650-1700. Why beeswax? Big trade item as the Catholic Church uses copious amounts of beeswax for its candles. More here.
cmcclain | January 13, 2008I am really surprised a new paper in Nature did not receive more press given its potential to create a shift in how we view hydrothermal vents. The new work by Tolstoy et al. (Columbia University's Earth Observatory in New York) reports on data gathered from seismometers placed over a 4 square km area in the East Pacific Rise, about 800 kms (500 miles) southwest of Acapulco. Through seismic data, tremors were intriguingly clustered around where the cold water entered the rock, the team was able to construct an image of how water circulates though vent systems.
Old Hypothesis: The pressure of…
grrlscientist | January 13, 2008tags: I and the Bird, blog carnivals
The most recent edition of the Natural Sciences Carnival is now available for you to enjoy. They included a bunch of stories that I sent to them along with a bunch of other stories as well.
cmcclain | January 13, 2008
Image from surfersvillage.com. Surfer catching wave at Mavericks
The Mavericks competition was this past Saturday bringing in the best dozen or so big waver surfers (invitation only!). The best word to describe someone who spanks waves reaching 20-30 feet, historically they have reached near 50? Cajones. Let us not forget the freezing water and jagged rocks. You can see all the pictures here (note picture 27!).
I mentioned in the past if if you want to know where the good surf spots are sure you could ask your local bro', or you could gather some geologist and map the…
grrlscientist | January 11, 2008tags: Friday Ark, blog carnivals
The 173rd edition of the Friday Ark is now available. If you like looking at photographs of animals, then this is the place to go!
sciencewoman | January 11, 2008Having declared that the theme for the year is "seeking strategies for survival, sanity, and success," it seems fitting that its taken me until the 11th to come up with goals for the month. I've been too busy surviving. But I do better when I explicitly lay out goals for a month or so at a time. I post them here, I write them on my white board, and I keep them in my PDA. It helps keep me focused.
Here are my goals for the month:
Survival
Keep my head above water with my classes
Stay proactive on the Unbloggable Issue
Not give up blogging completely
Sanity
Take first two steps for my next (…
grrlscientist | January 11, 2008tags: ScienceDebate2008, Science Friday, Ira Flatow, National Public Radio, NPR, podcast
Remember how we have been lobbying for a presidential debate that specifically focuses on each candidate's planned policies regarding science and technology? And remember how things were picking up momentum fairly rapidly in the main stream media? Well, now National Public Radio's Science Friday with Ira Flatow is hosting a one hour call-in discussion regarding this very topic! [free podcast]. This show is being broadcast TODAY at 2pm EST, so be sure to call them in support of ScienceDebate2008! If you…
nisbetmc | January 10, 2008WAMU's Kojo Namdi Show spotlights labor rights for part-time faculty. You can listen to the full show here
Labor Rights for Part-time College Professors
For Washington-area universities, the large pool of professionals willing to teach on a part-time basis is an embarrassment of riches. But some have argued that colleges are over-relying on part-time labor, and underpaying teachers. We learn about a new collective bargaining agreement between George Washington University and a local union of part-time and adjunct staff.
Guests
Kip Lornell, Adjunct Professor of Africana Studies and Music,…
cmcclain | January 10, 2008Given the west coast storm of the century last weekend, today's FDSP seemed appropriate (click for larger image). Via howtoons.
grrlscientist | January 10, 2008tags: I and the Bird, blog carnivals
The 66th edition of I and the Bird blog carnival is now available for you to enjoy. This issue takes the form of a play written by Oscar Wildlife.
cmcclain | January 10, 2008I guess being called
a young ringer for Bruce Willis' John McClain character in the action-packed "Die Hard" movies
means I'm sexier than I thought. More importantly EatonWeb notes that "The result for McClain and Etnoyer is one of the more educational and enjoyable blogs at the Seed group, definitely worth the time to read regularly."
cmcclain | January 10, 2008Figure 2 from Etnoyer and Warrenchuk (2007). Callogorgia americana delta colonies with catshark egg cases attached. Depth 533 m.
ROV suction hose on the left is 15.25 cm (6 in) in diameter.
I am excited that our first post on new research for 2008 covers work by DSN's own Peter Etnoyer. 2008 also represents the International Year of the Reef making this report on the importance of deep-water corals as a shark nursery is timely. Although, there is a plethora of research documenting the vital role shallow-water corals play in providing substrate and shelter for fish (they might even teach…
cortex | January 10, 2008How universal are our first impressions of people? Test yourself against this piece of video art:
Do you agree with most of the descriptions? The art is surprisingly riveting, no?
Via kottke
sb admin | January 10, 2008Tomorrowâs Science Friday radio program will feature a segment on the Science Debate 2008 campaign, which calls for the presidential candidates to devote a debate to science-related issues. You can listen live online from 2 - 4pm Eastern time, or check your local NPR stationâs listings to see when the show airs.
Hereâs what we wrote last month about why such a debate is needed and which questions weâd like to see the candidates answer:
We here at The Pump Handle are particularly concerned about the way that political appointees in this administration have suppressed, distorted, and ignored…
petnoyer | January 10, 2008Here's another elegant headline from the Telegraph UK publication I mentioned below. You gotta love the Brits.
Surfer dude stuns physicists with theory of everything
The comments section is pretty fascinating... "Interesting. Similar to my onion-model of the universe. Remove the time dimension...and you get a perfectly rational view of life." This is a compelling story about a mathematical form with 248 points called the E8 which can be described by the same equations that accounts for more of the substance of the universe than the prevailing "string theory".
If you're looking for more surf…
cortex | January 10, 2008There's an interview with me in Newsweek.com:
NEWSWEEK: What surprised you most while doing the research for this book?
Jonah Lehrer: One thing was how seriously all of these artists took their art. They really believed that their novels and paintings and poetry were expressing deep truths about the human mind. As Virginia Woolf put it, the task of the novelist is to "examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day ... [tracing] the pattern, however disconnected and incoherent in appearance, which each sight or incident scores upon the consciousness." In other words, she is telling…
petnoyer | January 10, 2008You may have learned in Oceanography that wind driven surface effects are limited to the first 70m of the ocean, in what's commonly known as the Ekman layer. However, climate oscillations, even small ones, have a deeper impact on the oceans. They can influence oceanic conditions a mile below. The Telegraph UK calls one newly revealed mechanism a "freak" ocean wave because it travels underwater, with little or no surface expression. This was such a good spin I had to promote it to main title.
In reality, these are periodic Kelvin waves travelling eastward along the equator at the submerged…
cortex | January 10, 2008One of the many reasons I'm a big fan of Michael Pollan's work, including his latest manifesto, is that he's one of the few science journalists who emphasizes what science doesn't know. Here's an interview from Gourmet:
CH: When your piece first came out in the Times Magazine urging people to ignore all the nutritional claims and eat only things their great-grandmothers would have recognized as food, some readers accused you of being anti-science. But you do actually reference a lot of scientific studies in this book--particularly agricultural and environmental science, and quite a few…
thescian | January 10, 2008Severe famines killed many millions in India between 1700 and 1900. [Chronology at Wikipedia]. Nobel prize winning economist Amartya Sen's work on endemic deprivation stems from his experiences of the Bengal famine as a child.
Photograph of a South India family in 1878 by W.W. Hooper, a Colonel in British army who took many photographs of Madras famine.
The apathy and greed of Colonial rulers had a hand (directly or through inaction) in many famines. With that introduction let me pass you over to George Monbiot's reveiw the book Late Victorian Holocausts at Guardian where he points out the…